Coming back to the University of Chicago at the end of September was jarring. Only a week before I had been a VIP at a star-studded concert tour in Florida, and the months before that I had been on a whirlwind tour of Florida for meetings and political strategizing. To say I was still decompressing was an understatement, but it was nice being back in Chicago even if it felt like a downgrade from my high-flying life.

  My bandmates Deb and Nance had migrated to different dorms for their sophomore years, but we were able to reconnect at the Reynold’s club once the first week of classes settled down. We were already getting requests for The Belle Curves to perform around campus, but first we were eager to share our stories for what we were doing over the summer. Obviously I couldn’t tell them all of my activities, but I could tell enough.

  “I had a summer internship in Florida,” I casually stated over a coffee at Uncle Joe’s. “Interning for a concert promoter. And voter registration.”

  Nance snorted. “That’s a fancy way of saying you fetched coffee in an office somewhere.”

  “It’s true!” I asserted. “I was running all over the state. I got to meet the Foo Fighters and Third Eye Blind!”

  Nance shook her head. “Now I know you’re full of it. Concerts and politics? Aren't you an Econ major?”

  “Besides,” Deb chimed in, idly tapping a rhythm with her fingers like she usually did. “If you were in Florida all summer, why don’t you have a tan?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, of course I got some sun. And besides, I have proof.” I pulled out a packet of photos from my bag, which I handed to the girls.

  “Is that, no way!” Nance gasped. “Is that…is that Dave Grohl?!?”

  “Yep! And that’s me sitting next to him. We hung out for days. I told you.”

  Nance held up her hands in mock defeat. “Well, you win for best summer ever.”

  Deb was still thumbing through the photos. I would have thought, as a fellow drummer, she’d be impressed by Grohl, but instead she stopped at a photo of me outside working the registration table in my bikini top with a smile. She held it up.

  “Maya, you’re outside in this photo.”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “Outside in Florida, with the same porcelain skin you have now.” Deb studied me intently. “How much skin block did you put on everyday?”

  “I didn’t use any –” I stopped short. “Why are you so fixated on my skin all of a sudden?”

  “Sorry, I’m a Bio major,” she shrugged. “Anyway, badass summer, Maya.”

  I laughed it off, but for some reason her observation stuck with me for the first few weeks of the term. I hadn’t really thought about it, but for as long as I remembered my skin was as fair as it always had been every summer. It made me think about other oddities I had noticed over the years, like how a prominent mole that was on Matthew’s forearm in his timeline wasn’t on mine. In fact, I didn’t have any moles anywhere on my body.

  What really weirded me out was a lecture in one of my psychology Core classes in early October. We were studying how biological organisms in nature, as well as humans, calculate genetic fitness and attraction through visual cues.

  “We like to think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it isn’t. There is a concept known as ‘bilateral symmetry,’” my professor indicated, showing an image of a butterfly with mathematical measurement lines. “The core idea is that humans are hard-wired to seek balance in form, which indicates health and beauty, as well as stability.”

  He flipped to the image of a male and female face, each with lines dividing their face vertically and cross-sectioned with lines between their eyes, cheekbones, and mouth. “There are certain proportions the human eye finds appealing, and it all comes down to symmetry. We automatically find humans with a higher symmetry between the left and right sides of their face are assumed to be healthier and more attractive. Let’s test this out!”

  He had the front row of the lecture hall, which included me, line up at his podium and at his modified camera and projector. It was a surprisingly sophisticated device for 2000, as he was beta-testing some new software and equipment for his own research. The first boy in the row lined his face with the camera, and was projected onto the screen, with an estimation of his attractiveness ratios as well as a left/left and right/right image of his face. The class laughed as students lined up and had their symmetrical percentages displayed.

  When it was my turn, I put my chin on the bar and had my image taken. The professor clicked away at his keyboard, calculating my proportions and symmetrical percentage. He had a frustrated look on his face, and after tapping his monitor he shook his head.

  “It looks like my program is having a bit of a technical issue. In any case, please break out into your discussion groups and go over the assigned reading,” he instructed as we gathered into our groups and he continued examining his computer at the front of the lecture hall. When class ended, the professor signaled for me to join him at the podium while the rest of the class piled out.

  “Yes, professor?”

  “Yes, um, Miss Peterson. If you have a few minutes, could you go to the camera again? I wanted to calibrate something.”

  I tilted my head. “Sure, professor,” I said as I stepped up and had my picture taken again.

  The professor studied his screen intently as I stood in front of his podium, patiently waiting for him to dismiss me. After several clicks and another image of my face taken, he finally murmured, “Well, this is interesting.”

  “What is it, professor?”

  He gestured for me to look at his screen. “This is something I haven’t seen before, so I wanted to check again to make sure the program is running properly. The average human faces has roughly a three percent deviation from left to right. A slightly lower eye, a more upturned corner of the mouth…”

  He showed me the original image of my face, as well as the left/left and right/right image.

  They all looked the same.

  “Miss Peterson, your face has a less than 0.2 percent difference. There’s a few differences, but they are so slight my computer barely registers them. This is near perfect symmetry!”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I laughed it off, pushing my discomfort aside. “Well, I guess that’s why I was able to get into catalog modeling so easily when I was in middle school.”

  “Um, I’m sure it is. Well, I don’t mean to keep you, Miss Peterson. Thank you for staying.”

  Though I masked it well enough, I walked away from the class with a profound sense of unease. There were a lot of metaphysical questions I refused to entertain on a daily basis, and the circumstances of my transposition through time and gender begged too many existential crises. Was I artificially created somehow? Was I shoved back in time for any particular reason? Was the world real?

  Over time I became so preoccupied with adjusting to my new life that I stopped dwelling on questions like that. Since that terrifying abduction through time and space nine years ago I had no indication that whoever or whatever returned me to the wrong time was even still interested in the amoeba that they sent back to the petri dish. I had the suspicion that whatever my circumstances were, the universe was ambivalent and my new life was permanent.

  Questions of existence had to be put aside, and work was the best way to do it. Butterfly Capital was running smoothly. Catherine was officially installed in the second bedroom, managing the household expenses with a terrifying efficiency that Karen had drilled into her over the summer. It was nice not having the beautiful apartment be so lonely in the evenings, even if she spent most of it studying for the Business major she recently switched to.

  Other than on-boarding new employees and with Thorne and the accountants managing my trades, the majority of activity was coming from my lawyer Mr. Vance. He was keeping tabs on the army of lawyers in Florida I had hired and was giving me frequent updates. They had run a very successful audit, and in late July had presented a full and public draft complaint to the Governor’s Office mere days before the Republican National Convention. All according to the plan, of course.

  Governor Jeb Bush was forced to issue a full capitulation alongside the Secretary of State Katherine Harris, publicly condemning the program and assuring that the State of Florida would not purge any of the thousands of voters that had been planning to the entire time. At almost the same time that they announced this, another scandal was brought about by The Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times about the polling places in predominantly black counties. The exposé was horrifyingly timed for Governor Bush.

  Not only was the public incensed that there were institutional plans to defraud black voters months before election day, another lawsuit brought about by the NAACP caused almost daily scandals in Florida. It didn’t help that emails were mysteriously brought to light from signed by Harris herself from the company entrusted with the purge back in May. Governor Bush, fearing that a corruption scandal that would affect his brother’s presidential campaign, called for investigations.

  There were weeks of crushing press conferences, and one October afternoon as I sipped coffee from a table at Uncle Joe’s I watched as Secretary Harris announced her resignation as Secretary of State. Remembering her role in the recount fiasco of Matthew’s timeline, seeing her humiliated gave me a dark, profound satisfaction. I wordlessly toasted the TV with my coffee and walked to the library.

  The updates I received during the lead-up to Election Day were mundane, but classes kept me busy as did The Belle Curves’ show schedule. We played in practically every building on campus, and shredding on my guitar was one of the few things that could take my mind off of the upcoming election. That, and the occasional hook-ups I would have after the shows. My anxiety about November manifested in a little slutty phase I was going through, which even Nance found impressive. I always played it safe though, and never stayed the night. It was just about the most perfect distraction I could hope for.

  Finally, the day came: November 7, 2000. For days I had been sick with worry, isolating myself when I wasn’t in class and even Catherine expressing worry when I stayed up all night watching CNN and obsessing. I decided to join the University of Chicago Democrats group for a live watch event they were hosting in Hutchinson Commons. For my own sanity, I made a generous donation for their party in the form of a dozen pizzas and full catering, since if I was alone watching I probably would have spun out.

  The high ceilinged room was packed with students, and ignoring the pizza and beer I squeezed into a bench with the rest of the students. I watched the state polls start closing and being posted around six o’clock. I had my cell phone on me with Vance phoning in updates from the lawyers in Florida monitoring the polling stations all day, but now I was glued to the screen. If I had believed in a god, I would have been praying.

  The first few states came in solidly for Bush. Indiana. Kentucky. Georgia. No surprises, though I was sweating looking at Bush’s lead of 41 to 3. I was gripping my seat as Ohio and Virginia put Bush’s lead to 81. It was seven o’clock that was the most crucial moment. Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were called for Gore, with Tom Brokaw of NBC interrupting with an urgent update.

  “In a major projection, NBC News projects that Vice President Al Gore has carried the state of Florida. A decisive victory in a state plagued by legal challenges for months.”

  The room around me exploded as they updated their score board with the twenty-five points from Florida added to Gore’s tally. The only person in the room who wasn’t excited was me. I knew this is what happened in Matthew’s timeline; Gore snatched Florida early, but as numbers came in he had lost ground. So far, everything happened as it happened before. Admittedly, Brokaw mentioning voter fraud in Florida was new.

  The hours passed, with Gore winning New York and the Upper Midwest, with Bush easily carrying Texas and the flyover states. I waited for any retractions on Florida from any of the networks on the screens, but the anchors were gabbing on about Pennsylvania and ignored Florida entirely. Gore’s lead in Florida didn’t recede, however; they slowly upticked as the night went on.

  By nine o’clock, Gore was sitting at 222 points, with Bush at 179. Gore took Iowa as predicted, with Bush taking the Rockies. Gore simply needed 41 votes at this point, and California and her 54 were still tabulating. As my schoolmates were laughing and drinking, I was chewing my fingers waiting for breaking news to erupt about Florida, but Gore’s lead kept steady, and was pointedly disregarded by the anchors in favor of more interesting races in Tennessee.

  At ten o’clock, the West Coast polls closed, with California instantly called for Gore, along with Washington and Hawaii following not long after, putting the totals at 195 for Bush, and 298 for Gore. Every network simultaneously projected Al Gore as the 43rd President of the United States. Hutchinson Commons erupted, but I kept rocking my seat, expecting any second that the numbers would indicate a tighter race in Florida. I ducked from screen to screen around students hugging and cheering, trying to see what Florida’s numbers were, to no avail.

  With my heart pounding a mile a minute, I found an isolated corner and pulled out my cell phone to call Vance once again, and he answered immediately.

  “Ms. Peterson! I assume you heard! Congra–”

  “Mr. Vance,” I interrupted, “I need the current Florida numbers. None of the networks are paying any attention, and I need to know how close it is.”

  “Of course, Ms. Peterson,” Vance complied, and I heard him bark a few orders to someone in the room with him. “I have a readout on my computer screen right now…it looks as if Gore has a lead of roughly 32,000 votes as of ten-thirty central.”

  My hand shook as I held the phone to my ear. “And the trend? Any talks of a recount?”

  “It hasn’t moved in about forty-five minutes. The threshold for an automatic recount in the state of Florida would be a little over 29,000 and while Bush could request one, it would be unlikely at this point. He would need evidence of massive fraud, but given the last few months I find that highly unlikely.”

  There was a pause on his end. “Good work, Ms. Peterson.”

  Tears started filling my eyes, running down my cheeks like a flood. I squeaked, “Thank you, Mr. Vance. That will be all,” before turning off the phone and shuffling back to the room in a daze to join the already happy young Democrats. I fell back onto one of the sofas, simply staring with my mouth agape as my lips quivered and the tears kept running. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  I did it, I kept thinking to myself. I did it! I did it!

  As I sat stupefied and dripping, one of the male organizers stepped over to me. “Hey there,” he asked with a friendly, reassuring grin. “You okay?”

  I looked up at him, my eyes red and mouth hanging open, and I immediately leaped to my feet and clutched this complete stranger with the desperation of years of preparation and fear. I buried my face into his shoulder, crying and sobbing into his collared shirt.

  He patted my shoulder as I hung to him, polite but confused. “I’m sorry, did you vote for Bush or something?”

  I started laughing; a messy, wet cackle that only a girl as cute as me could get away with hanging on some guy I didn’t know.

  “No,” I stammered, wiping my face with my forearm. “I…I definitely didn’t vote for Bush.”